


Outreach

by frith_in_thorns



Category: Temple of the White Rat Universe - T. Kingfisher
Genre: Field trips, Gen, Slice of Life, Strange problems people hope the White Rat will fix, Tree Law, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:15:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28304412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frith_in_thorns/pseuds/frith_in_thorns
Summary: "We don't generally assess the… cursédness… of objects, trees or otherwise," Beartongue said.
Comments: 14
Kudos: 56
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Outreach

**Author's Note:**

  * For [singlecrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/singlecrow/gifts).



> Dear Raven, to go with your requests I wanted to write you something more intellectual and compassionate and... lawyery... but this is what happened. I hope you like it anyway! <3

Bishop Beartongue looked up at the diffident knock on her office door. "Come in," she called. She lifted her mug of tea for a fortifying swig, but the cold dregs it contained were a disappointment. She remembered she had done the same thing an hour ago, and had meant to get a fresh cup.

The door opened to reveal one of the younger lawyer-priests. "Hello, Clarence," Beartongue said. "What can I help you with?"

Clarence looked a bit worried, although that wasn't unusual for him. He had that sort of face. "It's a petitioner," he said. "I wasn't sure about her case, so I asked Zale, and they said you would probably be interested."

"Did they," Beartongue said. She suspected Zale of on occasion recommending cases to her purely in hope that she would find them entertaining, which was very sweet. "What's it about?"

"It's a dispute about a tree," Clarence said. "Apparently it might be cursed. There's some question over the existence of the curse, though."

Beartongue brightened. This was definitely an improvement over her morning paperwork. "By all means, send the petitioner in," she said.

Clarence exited her study, conveniently giving Beartongue a couple of minutes to tidy her desk before he returned, trailed by a pair of women who looked to be in their thirties. "Bishop Beartongue, these are Polly and Rhododendron Waite," he announced.

"Thank you, Clarence," Beartongue said, and he left to attend to the next petitioner waiting on him. Beartongue waited for the women to take seats. "The Rat's blessing on you," she said. "I understand you're here because of a cursed tree?"

"It's actually a curs _éd_ tree," Polly said, with a very definite emphasis. Beside her, Rhododendron grimaced faintly.

Beartongue kept control of her expression. "A curséd tree. I see. Can you tell me about it?"

"It's mine," Rhododendron said, with an undertone of despair. "Well, I mean, Polly married into the problem. Basically, I inherited a lovely house a year ago, but it comes with this awful tree. I want to chop it down, but the people in the village won't let me."

"Is it on public land?" Beartongue asked. "Or held in common trust?"

"Oh no, it's on my land," Rhododendron said. "I just made the mistake of mentioning to someone that I planned to get rid of it, and since then I've heard from half the village, over and over, that I'm not allowed to get rid of it. Because of the curse, you see."

"Why do you want to get rid of it?" Beartongue asked. "I'm not judging, of course — I just want to be clear about all the facts."

"If you saw it you'd understand," Rhododendron said, darkly. "It's _dreadful._ "

"Extremely curséd," Polly added, half under her breath.

"I'm afraid I'm still not exactly clear on which point you're petitioning the White Rat for help," Beartongue confessed. "If you definitely own it outright then it's your choice whether to chop it down or not. Do you need us to publicly confirm the validity of the will?"

Rhododendron looked yet more unhappy. "I _told_ you," she half-whispered to Polly.

Polly grimaced. "We hoped — Is there someone from the Temple who can have a look at the tree and explain to everyone that it really is perfectly safe to cut down and nothing bad will happen?"

"We don't generally assess the… cursédness… of objects, trees or otherwise," Beartongue said. "That's more the purview of the Dreaming God."

Rhododendron began to throw up her hands, but stopped herself mid-gesture and balled them into fists instead. "We tried that," she said. "We asked a paladin —"

"He was _lovely_ ," Polly interjected.

"— and he said there didn't seem to be anything wrong with it," Rhododendron finished. "Definitely no demon. He was the one to suggest we come to you. He actually said we should ask for you personally, but I didn't really feel we could do that."

Beartongue's mouth was tugging into a smile. "Which paladin did this happen to be?" she asked.

"Uh, Jorge," Rhododendron said. "He said to say if you didn't know him, he's Istvhan's friend."

"Oh, I do know him," Beartongue said. "Hmm. And paladins all pretend they don't have a sense of humour. Where exactly is this tree?"

In a small village only just outside Archon's Glory, it turned out. Beartongue considered her piles of paperwork, including several items of correspondence from the Archmandrite of the Hanged Mother. "Wait here," she said, and strode to the door.

There was a gangly teenage novice perched on a stool a little way down the hallway, with his nose in a book. He looked up quickly. "Bishop?"

"I need a carriage," Beartongue told him. "And a paladin. I'll be out for the rest of the day."

-

Looking at the tree in question, Beartongue could completely understand why it had become the source of so much contention.

It was probably an almond tree, but with bark that was near-black. It was extremely old, and the limbs were bent back and forth around the trunk in a way that seemed to suggest a writhe. The leaves, too, were darker than they should really be. All in all, it did in fact look _exceptionally_ curséd. 

Beartongue was delighted to have had the opportunity to see it, and said so.

"Do you have any ideas?" Rho asked. (They had established during the carriage-ride that she did _not_ like being called Rhododendron.)

Beartongue walked around the tree, and then eventually touched its trunk. She didn't particularly expect to feel any sort of divine inspiration, and was therefore unsurprised when it didn't materialise. This wasn't really the sort of thing her god chose to personally intervene in, although she trusted that if He was watching just then He would be suitably amused.

"I'm sure it shouldn't look like that," Shane said.

"Any ideas?" Beartongue asked him. She remembered now that Shane had some interest in gardening, which was a happy coincidence — she had chosen him out of the available paladins because he had both a sense of humour and an imagination, but didn't let himself get carried away with either. 

"Hmm." Shane stepped up close to the tree, and examined it himself. "You know we're being watched?" he said, quietly.

"Oh, yes." The few villagers watching from the road were probably the least of their audience. "So, do you think someone cursed this poor tree?"

Shane snorted. "No," he said. Then hastily amended himself to, "Well, probably not. I don't know much about curses. They're not generally the sort of thing we got called out for."

"It does seem unlikely that someone would go to the effort," Beartongue said. "Unless this tree had somehow personally offended them."

"Even then, I think it would be much easier to affect the growing conditions," Shane said. "Curses are expensive."

"Very true." Beartongue turned to the two women. "Rho, was your relative you inherited this house from a particularly inept gardener?"

"No?" Rho said doubtfully. "I mean, I don't think he had any interest. He wasn't very interesting at all, really." She winced a little, possibly worried about how that sounded. "I didn't know him well. He was only a second cousin."

Polly nudged her. "He had that alchemist mother, though, didn't he? I thought family gossip was that was _why_ he turned out so boring, in reaction to her?"

That sounded more promising. "Could she have done something to the tree?" Shane asked, before Beartongue could.

"Maybe?" Rho said. "I never heard that she was a very _good_ alchemist, mind."

Beartongue looked at the tree again. "I find it hard to believe someone would have done that on purpose," she said. She tapped her foot thoughtfully and looked up at Shane. "Something affecting the growing conditions?"

"That's my best guess," he said. "What would you like me to do?"

-

The wonderful thing about her paladins, Beartongue mused (and she did notice her thoughts fondly claiming possession of them, and reprimand herself for it) was how eager they were to be helpful. Shane made no protest at being asked to track down a shovel, or at having an audience of three very impressed people as he dug down between the tree roots. His demonstration of his extremely superior musculature had put paid to the brief argument from Polly and Rho that the digging duty should rotate.

There was a very definite audience now. No one had tried to interrupt the proceedings so far — Shane was clearly excavating downward rather than trying to remove the tree, which was probably helping. Or maybe Beartongue's clerical robes were producing a quelling effect on anyone who might otherwise have interfered. She tried not to get too much mud on the white hem.

"Shall I get another round of tea?" Rho asked, as Shane's shovel clanked on something.

That drove all thoughts of tea away. Beartongue was immediately at Shane's shoulder, with Polly and Rho on his other side. "What have you found?"

"Not sure," Shane said, and scraped a bit more with the shovel. "Some kind of box?"

It took another few minutes for him to clear the earth entirely from the lid. The village audience had begun edging closer.

The box turned out to be an old trunk, made of extremely rusted metal. The heavy padlock was in such a state that it fell off when Shane gave it a sharp tug, and he pulled the lid up, straining against the corroded hinges. An extremely pungent smell rose up with it.

The inside of the box was full of bottles and jars. They had probably all been sealed once, but some of the lids had warped… and actually, some of the _jars_ had warped as well. As had the inside of the box, which had large cracks running through it. 

"I think, in the absence of other evidence, we can firmly blame the alchemist for your tree problem," Beartongue said. "This certainly doesn't look healthy."

"But not a curse," Rho said. "Oh, thank the gods. The Rat in particular. Surely now we can get rid of this absolutely blasted tree!"

"We need to get rid of this first," Shane pointed out. He took hold of the edges of the chest, straining to lift it out.

Part of it came out. Then the rusted and chemical-eaten metal split apart in his hands.

In the fraction of a second before the time-decayed jars all fell against each other, Beartongue felt the touch of her god. A whisker-jolt across her mind, firing her nerves into pulling the others back even before what was happening had time to fully register. Then Shane lent his muscles to her effort, bodily flinging them away.

The box of mysterious alchemical compounds exploded.

It was probably a very dramatic explosion, except that Beartongue mostly missed it since she had a face full of mud. Which, on the whole, seemed like a better deal than being caught in the fireball that, she heard later, had been briefly visible from the watchtower at Archon's Glory. 

It had already been and gone by the time she rolled over, evening out her coating of mud. What was left was an enormous quantity of black smoke, and a tree that was very much on fire. "I suppose that's one way to solve that problem," she said. Because, really, someone had to.

Polly began laughing uncontrollably. Rho patted her absently, transfixed by the flames.

"Is everyone all right?" Shane asked.

Everyone seemed to be. Polly was still laughing. Rho looked to be torn between horror and glee. "Thank you!" she exclaimed to Beartongue, glee finally winning out. "You, and the Rat. That was _amazing_."

"This isn't quite our usual manner of conflict resolution," Beartongue said. Feeling she needed to make that clear. Although she had a sneaking suspicion that this would spoil her for problems which couldn't be solved by uncontrolled explosions. Particularly problems involving the Motherhood. "I hope it won't cause any hard feelings with your neighbours."

"It'll give everyone something to talk about for the next century," Polly pointed out. "That's got to be worth something."

"No saving the tree, anyhow," Shane said. He glanced at Beartongue. "They'll probably start saying this was divine intervention, you know."

Beartongue sighed. "Yes, probably. And we work so hard to explain that we serve a measured and sensible god…"

Shane tried, unsuccessfully, to scrape mud out of his beard. 

-

The mud was still there during the carriage-ride back to the Temple. The mud was _everywhere_. The novelty of it had worn off, and Beartongue was very much looking forward to the hot bath which awaited her. Much less alluring was the thought of the paperwork which had no doubt continued to pile up in her absence. Really, this field trip had been shockingly irresponsible of her, but she couldn't bring herself to mind too much. 

She had no doubt that the Rat would understand.


End file.
